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Traditional Personal Names: an Investigation Into Songhay Anthroponomastics

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) 2020 American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) e-ISSN:2378-703X Volume-4, Issue-9, pp-49-58 www.ajhssr.com Research Paper Open Access Traditional personal names: an investigation into Songhay anthroponomastics 1Mohamed MINKAILOU, 2Ibrahima ABDOULAYE, 1Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako. 2 Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako ABSTRACT: Human beings have always been characterized by their names, naming ability and practices. Names are created and shaped by sociocultural values and serve to give an identity to their bearers. They tell about the place and period of birth of the bearers, their social status, gender, the birth order in the family, etc. The Songhay society of Northern Mali makes use of the same naming devices in that it describes and names its sociocultural environment, expressing by the same token, the Songhay philosophical thought and vision surrounding those names and naming systems. In fact, most Songhay traditional names have faded away under the heavy weight of Islam and Christianity which have come to impose new names and naming practices. Research in African onomastics, Songhay onomastics included, is generally scanty. No serious study is known to have taken place specifically on Songhay traditional personal names. Therefore, this investigation is undertaken to fill this gap. The study focuses on the determination of the types of Songhay traditional personal names, the circumstantial meanings that induce their creation and attribution and their morphology. The participant interview was used to collect the data from Sognhay native speakers of Gao and Timbuktu living in Bamako. The name typologies (including the circumstantial meanings) uncovered by the study involve the kinship system, the period of birth (including the day, month or season), the social status of the name bearer (slaves), protection and/or survival, blessing, beauty, complexion, etc. The morphological typologies basically display simple nouns with 44.08% of frequency rate, followed by noun-adjective combinations, 26.88%, and two noun combinations, 15.05%. KEYWORDS: Songhay, personal names, anthroponomastics, onomastics. I. INTRODUCTION The study of proper names is a multi-disciplinary field that has caught the attention of language philosophers, anthropologists, linguists and ordinary people. Onomastics is the science of proper names including the study of their forms and use and of the varieties of naming practices (S. Ngubane, 2000). It investigates both anthroponomastics (anthroponymy) dedicated to the study of personal names (J. Algeo, 1992, p.727) and toponomastics (toponymy) devoted to the study of place names (V. Prabhakaran, 1997, p.1).While these two sub-fields look distinct, they are intimately related as anthroponyms are sometimes used as toponyms and vice versa (R. Guo, 2002). Songhay is a Nilo-Saharan language (J. H. Greenberg, 1963; L. Bender, 2000; and C. Ehret, 2001) spoken along the borders of the Niger River in Mali, Niger and Benin, but also in Togo and Burkina Faso. Speakers of the language have specific ethnic group names in their respective areas: Dendi in Benin, Zerma in Niger, or Koyraboro in Mali. The name Songhay itself is controversial. Most early texts written in French rather read songhoi or sonrhay. Of course, the source of such vocabulary is Arabic language since the first scholars interested in African history were Arab geographers such as Ibn Batuta. Phonologically, what native speakers recognize is soŋay according to the informants for the study. The deformation of the word was due to poor transcriptions in Arabic and French texts because the velar sound /ŋ/ exists neither in the Arabic nor in the French sound systems. The same poor transcription of the /ŋ/ sound can be noticed with the word Ghana when referring to the name of the Empire of Ghana. Referring to the far origins of the Songhay people, their beliefs and their historical background, it is noticeable that though Islam and Christianity have strongly influenced the naming practices in West African countries, some traditional personal names do still exist among the Songhay speaking communities, particularly among the elderly. The need to investigate in such an onomastic topic can therefore be justified by the obvious fact that most of Songhay traditional personal names are unknown to younger generations; worse, most of such AJHSSR Journal P a g e | 49 American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) 2020 names have simply disappeared under the strong islamization undertaken since the turn of the tenth century, but more specifically under the last two dynasties of the Songhay Empire, that is, the very powerful Sonni and Askia dynasties. It is worth noting that the roots of Islam-oriented Arabic have become so deep in West Africa that communities tend to systematically reject non-Islamic oriented personal names. As pointed earlier, Anthroponomy is an interdisciplinary field related to genealogy, sociology and anthropology, to cite just a few. In the eyes of L. Mphande (2006, p.106), names should be perceived as the most meaningful constituent of a language vocabulary, and naming therefore appears as a process whereby speech communities organize and classify their social and cultural milieu (M. Minkailou, 2018, p.400). Naming practices include negative names with the use of ugly or low-priority names intended to stand as protective shields against harm that may threaten individuals, a strategy often adopted to fool evil spirits which are believed to hide behind most death cases; there are also secret or underground names meant to ensure the protection of their bearers, especially in areas where cultures may be threatened or where there may be more direct threats of violence to individuals who resist to assimilation from the dominant society; last, there is renaming (with the creation, adoption and use of second names) used during illness or danger that usually takes place where danger is rampant and life rather fragile. In African societies, names are often used to give an identity and define the name bearer (O. Nyambi et al, 2016); they equally tend to be carriers of a symbolic and less transparent meaning (M. M. Bagwasi, 2012, p.123). More, they seem to have a strong communicative value in that they appear allusive in terms of the feelings and opinions they carry (A. Batoma, 2009). In this particular sense, they can be ontological, capturing and expressing the ontological identity of the name bearer; they can equally be pedagogical, expressing the plurality of their social and cultural identities; finally, they can be allusive, carrying out messages in an indirect way, particularly to conflict protagonists. Names and naming systems help depict social and cultural groups. A study by K. Agyekum (2006) examines the personal name typologies in the Akan society of Ghana. The research gives insights into Akan culture, philosophy, thought, environment, religion, language and culture in an analysis that combines both philosophical and anthropological notions. The paper considers naming as an important aspect of the Akan society. It looks at Akan names as not being arbitrary labels, but sociocultural tags that have sociocultural functions and meaning. The study reveals the following typologies of Akan names: proper names, family names, circumstantial names, achievement names, stool names, religious names, occupational names, insinuating and proverbial names, bodily structure names and kinship names. The proverbial name typology in particular has equally been stressed by L. Makondo (2009) as a principal characteristic feature of East African communities who usually draw most of their names from proverbs. A further research in this sense is M. Minkailou (2018) that investigates Bamanan traditional personal names in Southern Mali. The study is a qualitative research depicting the cosmogonic nature of names in the Bamanan society of Mali. It uses philosophical and sociocultural notions in the analysis of the different typologies of names by pointing out the dimensions that condition the context and circumstances under which these names are created. The personal name typologies displayed pertain, inter alia, to the death of parents, the order of birth in the family, the days of the week, the months, the seasons, the places, the flora and fauna, the fetishes, complexion, survival desire, promises, and the social status of the name bearers. The Akan and the Bamanan naming systems do not differ so much from any of the neighboring West African societies in that they show similar characteristics with respect to the naming conditions and circumstances. Though Akan and Bamanan people are different, the naming typologies in these studies show similar morphological descriptions that are relevant to the current analysis of the Songhay names in this study. Literature on Malian onomastics is definitely scanty (or even non-existent) in that there is some literature related to other fields of knowledge that may make slight reference to names and naming practices (M. Minkailou, 2018, pp-401-402). Thus, this research becomes a necessity and holds a high significance at least in the sense that it will contribute to expand knowledge in Malian sociology, anthropology, and (socio)linguistics. The scope of the study includes the Songhay traditional personal names, and their origins and meanings in the regions of Gao and Timbuktu in Northern Mali. The principal objective of the research is to ensure the revival and maintenance of African traditional personal names. The study specifically aims to determine the Songhay name typologies, their meanings (circumstantial use among the Songhay speech community) and their structures. The study is carried out to answer the following guiding research questions: i) What are the Songhay traditional personal name typologies? ii) What are the circumstances that induce their creation and use and determine their meanings? And iii) What are the structures of those names? METHODOLOGY The instrument used to gather the data for the study is the conversational interview.
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